GAME TIME > MONEY

One of the hardest conversations I have with a young player is telling them to turn down the bigger contract.

A lot of agents only see the next payday. They don't think in terms of a 10 year career, and they don't think about pathway, trajectory and development. They forget that one bad move can close a door that never reopens.

Example:

A player has an offer that pays 15% more, but it's at a top club where his route to the team is blocked. He'll spend most of that contract on the bench, and because he's barely played, his next deal comes in around 50% lower at a club 2 divisions down.

The other route is: he turns that money down, drops a division, and starts every week. A full season of football under his belt, and when the contract ends he moves back up, with the next deal landing 200% higher than the one he first walked away from. Same player, same two years, two very different endings.

There's an uncomfortable part to this worth saying out loud.

A higher salary means a higher agent's fee.

So plenty of agents will steer a player towards the biggest-money club because it pays them the most, not because it's the right move for the player. It happens more than people think. The job is to do the opposite, and sometimes that means talking a player out of the very deal that would earn you the most.

There's more to it than always taking less, though. The real skill is judging whether the game time is genuinely realistic. That means reading the club's pathway honestly, looking at who's ahead of him and whether the manager will actually trust him, rather than taking a promise at face value. Does the club's formation suit the players' playing style? How safe is the manager's position who signed him? And it also means understanding the individual. The advice has to fit the person.

The stakes are brutal, too. The vast majority of players signed young by big clubs never go on to hold down a place at that level, and most of those careers are decided by exactly these early choices.

The players who get it right tend to look the same in hindsight.

Ivan Toney couldn't get near the Newcastle team, with 2 league appearances to his name. He dropped all the way to League One permanently with Peterborough, scored 49 goals in 94 games, and that form took him to Brentford, a record 31-goal Championship season, the Premier League, and England.

Mohamed Salah barely played at Chelsea, a couple of starts and a final appearance in a cup defeat to a League One side. He left for regular football and signed permanently for Roma, scored freely, and came back to win everything with Liverpool as one of the finest players the league has ever seen.

Kevin De Bruyne made 9 appearances for Chelsea and scored nothing under Mourinho. He left permanently for Wolfsburg to play, broke the Bundesliga assist record, and returned for £54m to become one of the best midfielders in the world.

Every one of them reached the top the same way. They chose the minutes over the money, even when it meant dropping down or moving abroad, and the money and the status arrived later, far bigger than anything they turned down.

Early in a career, game time is worth more than money. Win the game time, and the money almost always follows.